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Mulvaney Seeks Two-Day Gig Even as Budget Battles Go Into Overtime

December is usually when work on the federal budget policy
shifts into high gear, with Congress working full time to finish up 12 annual spending
bills to cover the government, and with the White House working on the voluminous
new budget it will send to Capitol Hill the next winter.

This year is no exception, with Republican leaders
struggling to negotiate what could be a $1.2 trillion omnibus spending package
to close out this year’s appropriations process and clear the decks for next
year. Meanwhile, the federal agencies are currently in the process of appealing
White House decisions about their next-year budgets.

With both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue focused on federal
spending at year’s end, long-time budget experts said it is curious that President
Donald Trump’s budget director is actually cutting back his time as director
the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Mick Mulvaney recently announced that he will keep his OMB job
but at the same time be acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau. As Mulvaney described it, he plans to work two days a week at OMB and
the balance of the week at the CFPB.

But Mulvaney’s move to head the CFPB landed him in immediate
controversy, with Leandra English,
an Obama administration holdover, also claiming the right to lead the agency.

Mulvaney’s two
high-level gigs left some speculating that the end result will be low
involvement in the appropriations end game and the preparation of next year’s
budget.

“By his own
admission, Mulvaney says he will do it only two days a week,” said Jim Dyer, a
principal at the Podesta Group who previously served as the Republican staff
director of the House Appropriations Committee and also worked in the White
House legislative affairs office. “How does that work? This is the time of the
year for agency budget appeals and the White House has to finalize decisions by
mid-December. Then they have to get the budget printed and have it ready to
send to Congress in February.”

Stan Collender of
Qorvis MSLGROUP said Mulvaney’s move couldn’t happen at a worse time. A
continuing resolution funding the government expires Dec. 8, and Congress has
yet to settle on a plan to extend funding. If lawmakers stumble and can’t pass
a new stopgap, Trump and Mulvaney will be facing a government shutdown.

Collender, a
former top congressional budget aide, said Mulvaney also should be deeply involved
in the decisions about next year’s budget.

“Probably the
budget preparations for 2019 are way behind schedule and it probably also means
the 2019 budget which is due by the first Monday in February is likely to be
late,” Collender said. “We might not see that until late March.”

One thing’s for
certain: The bench that Mulvaney might rely on at OMB isn’t that deep. Senators
of both parties currently are blocking the nomination of Russ Vought to serve
as deputy director in order to pressure the White House to support their effort
to get more disaster monies in the same year-end spending negotiation.
Meanwhile, senators still haven’t advanced the nomination of Margaret Weichert as Trump’s nominee to serve as deputy
director for management at OMB out of committee.

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